These stories, which Ursula from Hartmuth´s Forum found and got the permission to post, thanks to Reference, are so touching. Maybe you also like to read them!?

The old man and the bear

They found him 200 Km from the coastline of Alaska. A tiny bundle of fur, clutching onto a piece of drifting wood. "The guys lifted him on board", said Al Meston, the captain of the fishing cutter. "And yes, when I saw him sitting there like that, I couldn't help but taking him into my arms. Sure, well knowing that something like that shouldn't be done. A grown old man and a polar bear cub - his men would have a good laugh. But the heart is a strange thing and that's why 'Darris', the little polar bear experiences from now on a veritable royal existence: Meston orders all heaters to be turned off as a polar bear needs it cold, distributing blankets to his shivering crew. When approaching floes, he orders to anchor as Darris should not miss his daily bath in the sea. He insists on keeping open all doors on board, so that Darris doesn't feel locked up. But he also knows with every passing hour that the inevitable is going to come soon. "Darris had to get to a breeding centre", said Meston. Still entering the harbour, Meston calls for the game keepers. But when they arrive to take Darris, the polar bear starts crying - he cries in a way no polar bear ever should be crying, and he clasps the arm of the man, who has rescued him, with such a force as if he was going to drown again. Until this day the fisher men have been remembering how gruffly Meston sent the men away. "Come back with narcotic injections." When they had left the boat, he decided to sail off, taking Darris into his arms and aware that this animal would grow one day into a real big bear. But, as already mentioned, the heart is a strange thing. It wants to grasp and hold on to what it has come to love, notwithstanding the rules of this world or whether a small polar bear is supposed to grow up on a fishing cutter. It makes its own rules.Meston and Darris continue to fish another 6 months. Then, one day, the old man discovers a female polar bear on the coast- lying in front of her dead cub. He brings Darris on shore - a rescued life for a lost one. "There was nothing more to do. The moment had come. And it was a good moment."

The power of mother´s loveFor their babies the polar bears surpass themselves

As the enormous polar bear showed up in front of the supermarket in broad daylight and drawing herself up to a 3 meter high behemoth, Neill Simon grasped his gun. The sturdy Canadian is a ranger in Churchill, a little town near the Hudson Bay, where every year hundreds of polar bears pass by on their migration way. The fired anesthetic injection works quickly, but the 35 caves in the „polar bear prison“ , where the animals are taken care off for a short while to protect the inhabitants, where restless occupied. So the immediate transport back to the desert by helicopter was ordered.

That was the start of the tragic drama. Because if the men first would have to checked the animals, they would have found out, that it was a breastfeeding mother. “I´ll never forget, how sad it sounds when a polar bear baby appealingly is crying for her mother”, Neill is telling, who found the baby sitting in the snow at the edge of the town – while the mother just was abandoned about 300 km north away, somewhere in the arctic wilderness. Too late – to stop the action. For nights on end the little polar bear girl is crying, shivering with loneliness, hunger and longing for its mother. The bottle with food she only accepts reluctantly so she is becoming quickly more and more weak. “Snowwhite” the rangers call it and they swear they saw tears running over snowwhite´s fur. Neill Simon on the fourth day already is ready to give up the baby, when he got a radio message: ”Bear”! A totally exhausted polar bear shlepped herself in the direction of Churchill. Snowwhite is freed – and tumbling to her hard breathing mother. Their embracement is looking somehow human.

The bear must have walked day and night without break and miraculously has found the way back. “None of us was ashamed of his tears” Neill says. The hardliners gazed after the two bears trotting to the freedom as long as they were one with the endless, white horizon. They understood how much bears are able to love.

A gesture which says more than a thousand words. “Who ever saw the eyes of an orphaned chimpanzee baby, will be deeply shocked by the silent cry for help” Jane Goodall says. Never the researcher will forget the day when she for the first time looked into the button eyes of “Touch me”: “A heart-wrenching moment!”

A ranger took away the about six months old chimpanzee baby from poachers who had killed its mother. “The little one was all of a tremble” the zoologist is telling, when the baby was brought into the camp. “Only his big dark eyes were begging,” It took hours till she understood this deeply saddened look:” touch me, please touch me!” – As soon as Jane took the monkey child on her arm, its hands clutched at her. “oh, that´s what you wanted” Jane was whispering, and in this very moment no better name could come in her mind but “Touch me”. Because tenderness, feeling of security and love are for a chimpanzee baby as important as the daily food. With no other animal the childhood takes as long as its – until the age of five years the little ones will not leave the closeness of their mother. To lose her is the most terrible thing which can happen to a chimpanzee child.

Despite this terrible happening “Touch me” was very lucky to have found a surrogate mother. After five months the little one has recovered so far from her trauma, that Jane could take “Touch me” for the first time into the bush. When she discovered on the edge of a glade a chimpanzee clan she stopped for a moment and approached with her foster child in her arm slowly the extended family. After seconds of estimation one adult chimpanzee from the group came up till a few meters close to the two. Jane understood. She put the monkey child into the grass. Never Jane Goodall will forget the moment when the chimpanzee together with “Touch me” in her arms went back to her family….

The thing with Hermes was from the beginning rather problematic. This had on one hand something to do with the fact that this polar fox was much too small - he even didn´t reach his siblings bust. And later, as the family migrated through the snow it happened often, that he fell in his mothers footprints. On the other hand he displayed such a insubordination which was for a fox with his stature not so favourable. Always he explored new ways on his own - excursions which forced his mother to rescue him from different ice ponds, and once even out of a crevasse and in his file there was a note that "Hermes shows himself naive against the dangers of wilderness and his chances of survival are just miserable."

How true this word are was shown as Hermes once again took his own ways. Because when he was lost this time, his mother didn´t turn round - she was many kilometres away and the piteously cries of her cub didn´t reach her any more. Hermes is at the end of his tether, just on his own - and he is in danger of his life. Because there where he squats is the ancient path on which the polar bears migrate to the coast. And so really, as an old female polar beat gets his wind, Hermes seems to be lost.

But it turned out different: "Through my field glasses I watched her how she carefully came closer,", animal protector Lill Fronther says. "She sniffered at the little fox, nudged him with her big paw - and went off, just like she was expecting him to follow her." And in fact: Hermes did exactly that - with shy steps he toddled behind the female polar bear, into a very new life.

She let him eat from her food, is keeping him warm during the night and in the meantime this strange liaison is deemed to be the most unusual adoption in Greenland. But it is much more, because investigations in the polar bear register show that the polar bear obviously cannot get own babies. "Now she is giving all her love to Hermes" Lill says. And Hermes enjoys all the tenderness very well - in the meantime he stands 53 cm high at the shoulder. That's a record for polar foxes. As well as a wonderful friendship….

Wonderful stories which show just how much we all have in common. Human and animal behaviour is very similar.

Yes I think we tend to forget that other big carnivores need love too. And as I recall the study that showed failure to thrive -- which we now know happens to children who are not loved and cherished (as well as for other reasons) -- was a study on chimps.

It is amazing that the chimp family knew Touch Me, and wanted her even when she came with a person.

Every friendship is getting more intensive when ‘the ice is broken’. In the relationship between Malcolm Ramsay and his thick fured girl friend Nanuka it is just conversely: when finally in spring time the ice is breaking 11 months of separation are in front of them. Nanuka will wander around, looking for a partner, seperating again as soon as she is pregnant. Malcolm during this time will teach as a researcher (scientist) at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. As a zoologist he knows, that polar bears and humans can´t become friends – actually. As humanbeing he experienced that there can be exciting exceptions in reality.

Five years ago Malcolm was together with a colleague in the ice of the arctic Barrow Strait to watch polar bears. They heard wretchedly cries and at an icehole they found a polar bear baby in a trap. The Inuit-hunters had put the trap to catch seals, This is allowed to the Eskimos, even if often polar bears die in it. The mother wandered distressed around her baby. Malcolm shot an narcosis arrow and as she was lying there anaesthesized they rescued the baby. Malcolm took it on his arm to measure it, to weigh and to tag it. Than he let it free. As the mother awaked, she sniffed at her baby and gave a long look to the men in the icevan. Before the thaw Malcolm recognized Nanuka (Inuit: female polar bear) near his winter scientific base. Malcolm drove with the buggy to her and opened the window – by impulse. “Completely crazy” he said, “I know, that this is perilous. But she put her head in, sniffered at me and looked at me. It looked like as if she wanted to thank me. This Nanuka is doing only one time in every spring. Few days later the ice is breaking and she is moving on.”

The story takes place in just a few minutes. The seal was washed into the sea off the ice and the orca were swimming at it, but at the same time humpback whales arrived. The seal swam on to the humpback whale, into its armpit, and out of reach of the killer whale. It appeared that the humpback whale even used its flipper to help the seal stay safe. Then when the immediate danger receded the seal swam off, to get back on to an ice flow and out of the reach of the orca.

It came creeping. While playing with her brother the polar bear girl more and more often had to take a break to rest. While pushing to the milk of the mother soon she was pushed aside by him without resisting. Mother got up to ly down very near to her and even pushed helping her with her big paw closer to her teats. But the little one just was lying there looking apathetic over the wide landscape of the arctic tundra. She enjoyed the first rays of the sun, which warmed her fur. But this also couldn´t give new power to her. Than the morning came on which she just stayed lying down. Her mother and her brother made a few steps away and as she didn´t follow them they came back. The mother nudged her with her snout again and again. “Come on, peewee, make an effort” she seemed to say. The polar bear girl turned round on her stomach, tried to get up – in vain. Exhausted she turned to the side and closed her eyes. Relax, just relax. The end came two days later during her sleep.

Now mother and son could have continue their migration, because the law of nature says, that animals don´t know sorrow. But the mother bear didn´t have any intention to leave her dead baby. She was sitting at her side starring at her all the time. The son was clinging on her as if he wanted to comfort her. The dead body froze to the cold earth, the mother once again went there, sniffed and sank down into the snow. Two days, two nights. Than she got up, went together with her son for a last time to her dead daughter and finally turned away. As she wiped her paw over her face it looked like she wanted to dry her tears. Now the duty was calling – because the second youngster claimed his rights for life.

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